Case study: Pharmacy staff burnout

Anna is a community pharmacist working at a busy pharmacy. She's always enjoyed the patient care aspect of the being pharmacist, but has often struggled with stress at work due to time constraints and competing demands without adequate support. Anna was already feeling drained at work, and when she got home she was unable to enjoy herself and spend time with her family and friends due to the mental and physical exhaustion she was experiencing. Despite her struggles, Anna showed up to work every day trying to provide the best patient care possible, because she knew how much her patients and the healthcare system relied on her. The COVID-19 pandemic was no exception to this reliance, and in fact amplified the multitude of responsibilities Anna had. Despite the unknowns and concerns of the pandemic, pharmacists continued to provide direct patient care on the frontline. Already feeling overwhelmed by her daily demands, Anna took on the additional workload including increased patient consultations, information dissemination, solving drug shortages, screening/ testing for COVID-19 and vaccinating. Nicole Gwiazdowicz, a fourth-year PharmD candidate from the University of Waterloo created a study as part of her Patient Care Rotations in May/June 2021. She was interested in studying and helping with the mental health burden and burnout experienced by pharmacy staff. Key results are as follows: 88% of respondents are burned out from their work due to COVID-19 83.9% of respondents report a decline in their mental health since the beginning of COVID-19 due to stress at their workplace Over 79% of respondents with pre-existing mental health issues or illness report a worsening of their illness/issue Largest contributors of stress include: Vaccine roll out (72%) Staff shortages (69%) Staying up to date with information (65%) Managing drug shortages (55%) Increased patient encounters/ interactions (51%) On a scale to assess support from leadership, only 36% of respondents felt supported while 40% felt unsupported (24% felt neutral or not applicable) 46.4% of respondents have no additional resources to reduce stress caused by COVID-19 available to them 74.5% of respondents who did have additional resources provided to them did not find that they significantly reduced COVID-19 related stress Calvin Poon, RPh, BScPhm, ACPR, CDE is the Pharmacy Coordinator at Niagara Health and University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy Preceptor at Shoppers Drug Mart. Nicole Gwiazdowicz, PharmD candidate is a fourth-year student at University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy. Nicole and Calvin collaborated with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, who is a multi-award-winning education and psychology instructor, author and resiliency expert. They created a White Paper/ Open Education Resource (OER) on how to ease the burden. Nicole would like to thank Dr. Ali Elbeddini for his guidance in creating the survey and the Ontario Pharmacists Association, Sivajanan Sivapalan and Dr. Maria Aslam for helping to disseminate.

Case study: Pharmacy staff burnout

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